Basement Aspirations

by Rhonda Rosenheck

My basement boasts sprays, 

saws, a lathe, brushes, and task lights 

clipped to a pegboard hung with 

hammers, chisels, screw drivers,

drill bits, and dad’s old folding ruler.

A bentwood chair with torn cane

sags against the seeping foundation

and hosts sticky old cobwebs 

beneath a bulb too dim to warn 

against stepping in the kitty litter.

My workbench is layered with scraps,

shards, chips, and the flat, round, 

colorful practice doodads that I rub,

wishing for a table, bookshelf, and my 

pregnant niece’s nursing glider to appear.

~

Rhonda Rosenheck lives in New York’s Capital Region. Her publications include editing Thriving: An Anthology (multiple genres, Exsolutas Press 2024), for which she won a NYSCA individual artists grant through Saratoga Arts. Her two poetry publications are The Five Books of Limericks: A chapter-by-chapter re-reading of the Torah (Ben Yehuda Press 2023) and Looking (Elephant Treehouse Press 2018). She also wrote Yiddische Yoga: OYsanas for Every Generation (humor, Ben Yehuda Press 2016) and several chapters and articles in the field of teacher education. Rhonda’s poems have appeared in Heirlock Magazine and Kings River Life Magazine’s e-newsletter, The Paragon Press, and anthologized in A Book of Sonnets (Poets Choice Press 2020). Her poem MakerSpace was theatrically performed at the Fenimore Art Museum’s Glimmer Globe Theater, Cooperstown, NY. In July 2023, Rhonda was the resident poet at the Fish Factory Arts Centre in Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland.